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A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

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Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#241

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rglullis wrote: post #159
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its development still took millions of dollars in R&D $1mm at the time, $10mm today. They sold for the equivalent of $30 each in today's money and saved manned spaceflight from having to deal with graphite shards in the air and electrical. > car dependency is not the same as car usage "If the richest country in the world" got "rid of its car dependency," we'd still want safer cars.

> we'd still want safer cars With the technology controlled by a handful of corporations? At an development cost that will force them to create any and every opportunity to seek rent on your mobility?

Yes, it would be better if the good thing were more perfect.

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#242

Post by necovek »

f1shy wrote: post #223
necovek wrote: post #146

This sounds quite a bit like massaging statistics until you get the numbers you like. A few things that pop to mind: did we exclude drivers who were not eligible to drive (under the influence, no valid driving permit, cars with issues [braking broken]...)? (This mostly matters for evaluating the average performance compared to average non-impaired human — a drunk person might mess up with self-driving vehicle sensors…

>>did we exclude drivers who were not eligible to drive (under the influence, no valid driving permit, cars with issues [braking broken]...)? now THAT would be massaging statistics! Just take the best drivers, that had enough sleep, no drink, perfect car conditions... No. You have to compare with the whole world, "as it is"

What's the guarantee we'll have only fully up-to-date, safety-checked self-driving vehicles in the future with no messed up sensors or controls (there'll be impaired people doing the checks, right? :))?

This is simple with a small, experimental fleet — so we are looking at the best case scenario for these vehicles, but the question is what does it fall down to in a realistic commercial application?

That would also be comparing safety, because averages are always skewed by bad apples (i.e. 1 driver with 20 collisions gets an average to 2 for a group of 10 drivers with no other collisions). We at least need to start talking about medians, standard deviations groups and such.

And we need autonomous vehicles to beat or match good drivers, otherwise, good drivers are worse off in the streets (and due to how averages are used, this might be more than 50% of drivers). Not sure why that's so controversial?

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#243

Post by [deleted] »

rglullis wrote: post #238
mulmen wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grocery store is 1.3 miles from here but it’s a 300’ climb and it’s 42f and raining right now. Even with my e-bike that’s not pleasant. On a conventional bike that’s unrealistic for all but the most hardcore cyclists. There’s a bus that serves that route but the stop is uncovered and service is unreliable because it’s immediately after a rest stop where the human drivers take care of their biological needs. A rob…

> stop is uncovered and service is reliable And it doesn't even occur to you that the problem is the poor infrastructure? Do you honestly think that the optimal solution here is just to keep waiting for some trillion dollar corporation to be able to sell some new product that will bring you more "convenience" (at the cost of dependency and yet-more environmental costs related to cars and its required parking infrastr…

[deleted]

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#244

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rglullis wrote: post #232
Dalewyn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>developed proper public transit infrastructure. No amount of public transport can accomodate the personal whims and demands of anyone let alone everyone. Even Japan, famous for its public transport infrastructure, still has a healthy population of drivers both in metro and rural areas.

Nice strawman. I am not saying to get rid of cars altogether. I am saying that it would be better (and cheaper) for everyone if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first. Reduce the amount of yearly trips that are done by car. Provide alternatives . The important thing about Japan or Europe is not "they don't have cars", but "people make 3-4x less trips by car…

> if we took all those resources being out into "autonomous vehicles" and developed public transit first

Waymo has raised about $11bn [1]. That is at best 4 miles of New York subway [2]. It's a third of a train between Bakersfield and Merced [3].

These things aren't competing. To the extent we can compare them on capital efficiency, it's not a good look for American public transit.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/business/waymo-investment...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-02-24/cityla...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-21/high-spe...

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#245

Post by lucianbr »

epolanski wrote: post #177
lucianbr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the data collection and interpretation be perfect? What if the map with the speed limits is inaccurate and my commute goes through a road where the limit is 70, traffic drives at 70, but the system thinks the limit is 30? My car displays the speed limit in the dash, as a helper, and sometimes the above happens. If it had automatic braking for crossing the speed limit, it would be a disaster. Also, if I drive 70…

Those are technical not ethical issues. In any case, the system works fine in Italy, the purpose is only to provide more data in case of collisions. The idea is that if you're driving legally and you end up in a costly accident you can prove you were driving and acting correctly.

> Those are technical not ethical issues.

They can be football issues, they're still issues.

> you can prove you were driving and acting correctly

Unless there's a technical issue that makes you either unable to prove it, or makes the data say you were at fault.

Look at the thread about the UK Post Office and how many people were wrongfully convicted based on "technical issues".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036

"Just technical issues"

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#246

Post by amelius »

jpgvm wrote: post #42
amelius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like they compared apples to apples. Which make that an exciting result! I'd want to compare to our best drivers (e.g. ambulance drivers), not average drivers.

Why? We aren't looking at introducing autonomous ambulances any time soon. They should be compared to taxi/Uber/Lyft drivers that is what is being replaced by this and as such where the net harm increase or reduction will occur.

Why -> because if someone caused an accident I'd want to look them in the eyes and call them names; as opposed to calling a support number. If these vehicles were among the best drivers, at least I could live with it maybe. Emotions are real, you cannot always rationalize them away.

Average drivers sometimes end up in jail for their mistakes. If Waymo made those same mistakes, guess what will happen.

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#247

Post by necovek »

mulmen wrote: post #231
necovek wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about a case where there are cars behind me. And it's "unnecessarily" only legally, but most drivers understand this as a driving etiquette in congested traffic. Picture two streets joining together, both with long lines of vehicles in them. One of them has right of way, the other one doesn't. When everyone drives "passively aggressively" (like Waymo is being described to), an opening never shows up, an…

Ah I see, like merging on to a freeway. In Washington the law is actually to zipper merge (take turns) so I would expect Waymo to do that. It’s a good question and I’m not sure what Waymo would do there. Based on my limited experience I expect it would navigate that situation correctly. The bias is to go (safely), not wait for perfect conditions.

Thanks for the term as well ("zipper merge") — that's what I was referring to.

Yeah, I really wonder how it'd fare in that case while differentiating between "there are just 3 cars there, no need to yield" and "it's an infinite inflow of traffic, better yield to one car"?

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#248

Post by Brian_K_White »

necovek wrote: post #195
david-gpu wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not whether the machine can see the human, or even whether the machine knows that the human has seen the machine. The problem is that the human currently has no way to know whether the machine has seen the human.

The GP was talking about the driver knowing if the "human has seen the machine". For the inverse problem, we could simply start adding screens (instead of windshields?) to self-driving cars that acknowledge the pedestrians in a particular way (when there's only a few people, in the Black Mirror realm, they'd actually greet them by name using facial recognition and universal DB of everyone :).

What? I was absolutely talking about human cyclists and pedestrians needing to know that the machine sees the human, and not by blind faith, but through some active explicit demonstrable indication.

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#249

Post by rglullis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #241
rglullis wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we'd still want safer cars With the technology controlled by a handful of corporations? At an development cost that will force them to create any and every opportunity to seek rent on your mobility?

Yes, it would be better if the good thing were more perfect.

Nice rhetorical trick. It's not a matter of "more perfect".

The bad outweighs the good, plain and simple, and only those who are extremely naive or stand to gain from it refuse to acknowledge it.

Re: A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25M miles

#250

Post by schlipity »

Since you are completely removing at least 1 human from potential bodily injury claims, wouldn't you need a greater than 100% reduction in bodily injury claims in order for this to be better?

I mean when you are literally removing 1 person from possible injury, you literally can't have the same number of bodily injury claims. It can only be less.

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